ROSARITO, Baja California – A woman was raped by a Rosarito municipal police officer inside the jail cells at the downtown police station by the officer who was supposed to be guarding her while she was being held in the cell.

The event was at 12:30AM today (Wednesday) and according to the police report, the victim was 19 years old, and was being held in the jail after supposedly robbing a department store, along with her 20-year old husband, who was also arrested.

The same police report said that the young woman was about to be released after completing her sentence, when police officer David Barrios approached her to ask her how much time she had to spend in jail. She told him she was to be released at midnight, and the officer left to return and said she would not be released until 1:30AM.

That said, the victim said that the police officer turned around and went to some furniture that was about 7 feet from the cell. He opened a drawer from which he took a condom with a silver wrapping and went towards her and entered the cell.

He immediately started to abuse her, holding her against the wall and violently raped her. When he had finished the unspeakable act, he threw 40 pesos, two 20-pesos bills, at her and told her to quietly leave the cell so the on-duty judge would not see her leave. Out of fear, she complied.

She said that upon leaving, she found her husband, who had been let out before her, told him what had happened moments earlier, so he decided to return to the police station to file a complaint.

Police chief Joaquín Olea said in a press release that the police officer was placed with the Public Minister and warned that he would not tolerate actions outside the law.

The lack of surveillance cameras which protect the physical integrity of inmates has been questioned repeatedly, in spite of the fact there have been rapes and suicides in the jail cell area, in addition to torture, as shown by the official reports.

A little background on the news article I translated. Javier Sicilia is a well-known Mexican poet, essayist, novelist, peace activist and journalist. On March 28, 2011, Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco Sicilia Ortega, was murdered along with six other victims in Temixco, Morelos, Mexico, by drug gang members. In response, the poet led “estamos hasta la madre” (“we have had it”) protests throughout Mexico.

The United Nations and the United States must take drastic measures against México to pressure the Mexican government and to confront the impunity and human rights violations, said Jaavier Sicilia Zardain, leader of the Movement for Peach and Justice with Dignity (MPJD).

These measures must include an economic blockade, said the poet, who said that President Enrique Peña Nieto tricked the Mexican people, as he not only did not pull the military off the streets, but he allowed such actions as torture, which evidenced in a video circulating in the national and international news media, where army personnel and a federal police officer torture a woman.

“Peña Nieto has lied to us, and tried to hide, just as many state governors, Graco Ramírez among them, that nothing happened. Meanwhile, the violations grow and grow and crime and human rights violations continue to increase. To top it all off, when these violations are reported, they pursue the defenders of human rights, saying we are interfering. This is most grave and I hope the United Nations and Europe and the United States intervene and take radical measures to economically blockade Mexican. We cannot permit this state of affairs, where we have all lost civil rights and can be violated at any time,” he said.

The activist said that violence has worsened and since the military took to the streets, individual guarantees were lost.

“I am unaware of a military that does not violate human rights when people are pulled off the streets. We live in a state of emergency, where there are no individual guarantees, this video shows that. What we are seeing is that in fact there is a serious state of emergency, as the judicial apparatus and the law stopped functioning,” he stressed.

Sicilia Zardain added it was insufficient to just punish those who torture, but those in the upper command must be punished.”

On April 28, 2013, at 5:30PM, two Taxco municipal police patrols, in the state of Guerrero, arrived at the shop of artist James Wooden. Six police got out of pick-ups, broke into his shop, beat and handcuff Wooden and took him to the police station. In his declarations to the state Commission of Human Rights, Wooden, who was born in Florida in 1969, said days later that the police kicked him savagely for hours at the police station.

Wooden told his story in Texco a few weeks ago, in the cabin where he lives up on El Huixteco hill, almost one hour from the urban center. Wooden is tall, chatty and hurried. He spoke of what happened with the police, and mentioned his past military service, his little known knowledge and of jewelry. His story of the police seemed to bore him, as if he had already assimilated it, but he remember every detail and demanded justice.

All this, said the artisan, happened because of his neighbors. Wooden and his wife, Carmen, had rented a shop for some time. They had met in 2007 in the United States. Carmen Carranza, a Mexican, worked at a taco stand outside Houston. Wooden, a military veteran, worked as a blacksmith. The artist was a constant customer of Carmen’s the taco stand, and one thing led to another and…

When they arrived in Taxco, Wooden and Carmen started to work in silver, wax, seeking minerals at El Huixteco. Next they found a workshop. That was in the community of El Arroyo, outside of downtown, an adequate space they could afford. Wooden paid more than 1,000 dollars for two years rent. The bad luck, he said, is that his neighbors were with the Guerreros Unidos, a criminal band pointed out by Mexican justice to be behind the disappearance and death of 43 students in the nearby town of Iguala, in September, 2004.

In his statement before the Human Rights Commission, Wooden said that on the afternoon of the event, one of his neighbors screamed at him to move his car from in front of his house door. Then, he said, the neighbor’s brother came out, Raúl Flores Arizmendi, with a machete in his hand. According to Wooden, Flores Arizmendi screamed, “I am going to send you back to the United States in pieces if you do not move your car.” At the moment, said the artist, his neighbor added they they belonged to the “Guerreros Unidos,” in addition to “owning the street.”

The fight came from afar. Wooden and Carmen had seen the activities of their neighbors, and sometimes the recorded them with their cell phones. “I did not know that beside my shop was a safe house for the Guerrero Unidos,” said Wooden. How and when did you find out? “It was when they said so several times, not just the last time. Six months after arriving, when I had already invested 100,000 pesos (US$6,000), I started to see an ambulance.” Wooden told how he saw several times that a Red Cross ambulance come to the home, enter and go behind the garage and then, among everyone, drivers and occupants, pulled out the passengers while beating them. “They were young men, they came around 2AM or 3AM in the morning and they took them out beating them. I heard their voices.”

Although that could appear strange, Wooden’s story is the modus operandi of the Guerreros Unidos in the region, according to the data from the Mexican government. In February of 2016, journalist Héctor De Mauleón, one of the few who have had access to the complete account of the investigation into the Iguala case, explained that the chief lookout for the Guerrers Unidos in Iguala worked for Civil Protection. David Cruz Hernández, “El Chino,” wrote De Mauleón, “was employed to transport cocaine, weapons and people,”…In the central region of Guerrero, said the reporter, Guerreros Unidos had agreements with the local authorities in Iguala, Cocula, Taxco and Buenvista de Cuellar…

With the screams of his neighbors, Wooded and Carmen entered their shop. Soon the police pick-up trucks arrived, entered the shop without permission and took away Wooden. At the police station, he said, he was beaten until he arrived until they put him into a cell. They hit him, he recalled, gored him with their pistols, pointed them at his head, hit him with some wrenches, kicked him in the groin and ribs. Today, three years later, Wooden raised his shirt and showed the lump on his left side, as if it was a broken pipe and the loose piece pushed against his skin.

That afternoon, Carmen went to the police station and did not leave until her husband was released. The police say the arrested Wooden because he was drunk, and Carmen had to pay a 15 dollar fine. From there they went to the hospital and two days later went before the Guerrero State Commission on Human Rights. One year later, in April, 2014, the agency issued a recommendation in favor of James Wooden, which said the Taxco police had “violated” his “human rights and the inviolability of the home, freedom and personal safety.

Two years have passed. Wooden lives alone on the Huixteco hill, without electricity nor running water, with the support of his wife and the Idheas Foundation, which is helping with his case. The municipal government of Taxco evaded the Commission recommendation and although the municipal police no longer exist, his life is still in danger, he says. But he will not leave. He says here everybody accepts this tragedy, the drug dealing, the disappearances, the deaths, but for him, he will dig in and take the bull by the horns until the end.

MAZATLÁN – At 13 days since an armed group of men attacked a family and raped a 22 year old woman near El Quelite, nobody responsible has been captured, said the Deputy Attorney General of the southern zone of the state, Jesús Antonio Sánchez Solís.

“There are no arrests for these events,” he added through the press personnel with the Southern Zone Attorney General.

After this case there have not been more complaints of vehicle robberies or other act in this area, he reported.

The night of March 24, a family headed to Mazatlán to enjoy Easter Week vacations was intercepted by one of the armed groups on international highway 15, between Mexico City and Nogales, near El Quelite. They shot at one of the occupants and held the rest of the travelers hostage for two hours, where they sexually attacked a 22-year old woman, then set them free.

The victims filed a report with the Public Minister the next day in Mazatlán, and an investigation was initiated, but as of the moment those responsible are unknown.

Because of these events, the Inspector General of the State Human Rights Commission carried out an investigation into the activities of the ministerial authorities, as the affected family complained of the bad treatment and their lack of expertise to address the attack.

“The Inspector General for the Southern Zone is carrying out an investigation into the events, but it because of the news reports, it is an official investigation,” said the Inspector General, Miriam Berenice Hernández.

Acapulco, Guerrero – The “Primos Restaurante, Bar & Pizza” business is added to the list of hundreds of businesses which closed their doors in Acapulco, this in light of the criminality which reigns in the city, a situation which has caused 1,094 businesses to lower their curtains to the public.

Yesterday via a brochure published on its social networks, the restaurant announced its indefinite closure, due to circumstances outside the control of the business and its providers, and they asked for the forgiveness of their customers, as this also affects dozens of families who depend upon this source of employment.

“By way or this message, we want to communicate to you that because of issues external to the restaurant and its team, we will remain closed until further advice,” said the brochure, without providing more details on the motivation for its lowering its curtains to the general public.

They asked for forgiveness from their customers for the inopportune closure, “we are saddened in having to do this so abruptly and cutoff the sources of employment and the contributions we make to the Acapulco economy, and so we ask forgiveness of our customers to whom we have provided service for 10 years, which we offered with much love and affection.”

It should be noted this closure adds to the hundreds which have stopped operating in Acapulco, as in just three months and three days of the current year, their have now been 124 businesses which have lowered the curtains, and with that thousands of people were left unemployed and without income for their families, a situation that worries the entrepreneurs.

Baja California environmentalists complained of the contamination at a location between Playas de Rosarito and Tijuana, from the discharge into the sea of sewage through a sewage treatment plant belonging to the State Public Services Commission in Tijuana.

The treatment does not comply with established regulations for water treatment, which represents health risks, the claim.

According to Margarita Díaz, director of the civil association Border Project for Environmental Education, at least 1,200 liters (300 gallons) of water per second are discharged into the Pacific Ocean near the Real del Mar development from the Punta Bandera treatment plant, which is believed to lack the capacity to treat all the liquids it receives.

A study by the Federal Commission for Protection from Health Risks (Cofepris) carried out between November and December, 2015, revealed that the Tijuana beach is the dirtiest in Mexico.

High index of enterococcus bacteria

According to monitoring by the Border Project, the discharges from the treatment plant exceed the permitted amount of fecal enterococcus per each 100 milliliters of water by 12,000 per cent.

The standard is that enterococcus should be less than 200 per 100 milliliters of water to avoid health risks, and if this figure is exceeded, the beach should be closed.

“Theoretically, in an ideal world, the water is treated. But water with illegal quantities from all along the Tijuana River channel are pumped to this same treatment plant,” said Díaz.

This morning, a brigade from the Federal Consumer Protection Agency showed up at the Los Cerritos Beach Club,” located in the community of El Pescador, where they placed seals suspending operation when the found irregularities in the services offered to customers.

This is the same establishment where last weekend they were stopping beach access to local tourists, so they would no bother their foreign visitors who enjoyed the sun.

According to the information obtained, they found diverse irregularities, such as posting prices in US dollars on the menus, not displaying prices for drinks and false advertising.

The preceding is based upon Articles 7, 7BIS, 32, 34 and 57 of Federal Consumer Protection Law.

This beach club is located at kilometer 65 on the highway from La Paz to Cabo San Lucas.